


The Immortal Dead

by kishuku



Series: Those Who Hurt You Most [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Drugs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:35:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25380223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kishuku/pseuds/kishuku
Summary: Major character death (actual real death) warning.Written from Booker's perspective.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Those Who Hurt You Most [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860232
Comments: 19
Kudos: 177





	The Immortal Dead

The anguished scream jerked Booker out of his sleep, echoing out of his dream into the waking world. He clapped his hands over his ears with a yell.

He retreated to Paris after being banished into exile and then he had retreated into the bottle. Booker had always been a heavy drinker, a functional alcoholic. He’d always used alcohol to dull his grief, the edges of that blade of guilt and remorse was still razor sharp even after all this time.

The previous night Booker had dropped into his bed, dead drunk, his breathing shallow and labored. What the hell had been so terrifying in his dreams that he’d woken up sober?

Someone had died. But it wasn’t possible, Nile had only joined their little group months ago. If 200 years between immortals was too soon, a mere few months were impossible.

Booker considered it for a few more minutes, rattled by the screaming he could still hear inside his head. It sounded almost inhuman, mindless and animalistic. He reached for the bottle he kept next to the bed. It wasn’t his problem, if there was a new one then Andy and the others could deal with them. Booker downed the bottle in seconds, the burn from the whiskey bringing a bit of a tear to his eyes. He fell back onto the bed and waited for oblivion.

~~

_There was screaming. Endless screams without words or rational thought and they echoed. The screams built layers, as thick and suffocating as a winter quilt in the high heat of a desert summer, and the echoes rang over and over._

~~

Booker jerked out of sleep again, the faint buzz of alcohol in his blood. It was still dark outside, it didn’t seem as though he was going to get any sleep tonight. Maybe in the morning….

~~

_There was blood on his hands and the voice—Nicky?—that kept screaming over and over. The screams came as quickly as the man could draw breathe, his soul a shrieking banshee trying to tear itself free through his throat._

_There were no words, just an endless crashing grief that Booker’s blade of loss paled in comparison to. He couldn’t breathe, the waves of emotion made his lungs seize up and Nicky’s screams were deafening._

~~

Booker slammed back awake, his head splitting, his heart thudding, and his lungs nearly bursting from his chest. What happened?

He found his phone and dialed the last number he had for Andy, then for Nicky, then for Joe, and finally Copley.

No answer.

Booker staggered to his feet and stared at the useless phone in his hand. He wanted to hurl it across the room in frustration, but managed to hold his temper in check.

He just…. He just….

Booker took a long breathe and let it out slowly. He was in exile. He couldn’t contact them, they would contact him if it was something serious. Wouldn’t they? He considered going back to London, would they still even be there? He could go to Copley’s house, maybe the man knew something.

Or.

Or he could get drunk again.

Booker found a few bottles with a dreg or two in the bottom and polished those off, dropping the empty bottles into the kitchen sink. He needed more alcohol.

~~

_Nicky was babbling in a language Booker didn’t understand and cradling Joe to him, rocking back and forth, shielding Joe from view with his body. Joe’s hands lay limp and lifeless on a metal floor, a pool of blood spreading wider and wider around the two men._

_Nearby women and children cried, whether they shared Nicky’s grief or were crying in terror the air was filled with the sounds of weeping._

_Then Nicky threw back his head and started screaming._

~~

“Jesus,” Booker ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. He hadn’t slept for nearly four days, downing military grade stimulants with a coffee chaser. He’d even quit drinking for the interim. He just couldn’t handle sleeping, or rather, he couldn’t handle the nightmares.

He’d attempted his tried and true method of literally drinking himself to death, but nothing seemed to stop Nicky’s nightmares or stop the waves of his grief. The man’s screams, filled with nothing but loss and insanity, pierced through Booker’s drunken blackouts and death by alcohol poisoning only silenced Nicky’s grief for a few seconds.

~~

_“What is he saying?”_

_“He’s speaking a very old dialect of Turkish. What him and Joe spoke after they met during the Crusades.”_

_“Yeah, but what is he saying?”_

_A pause. “He’s accusing us of burying Joe alive.”_

_“Is he going to get better?”_

_Silence._

_“Are the nightmares going to stop?”_

_“I don’t know.”_

_A glimpse of Nicky tied to a bed, blood foaming from his mouth, eyes wild, all his muscles straining against his bonds. He choked as blood suddenly poured from his mouth in a gush and he inhaled it, attempting to drown himself in his own blood._

_Nile and Andy rushing to his side._

~~

Would Andy want to see him so soon after his betrayal? He wasn’t certain, but he knew he couldn’t do this on his own. Booker knew he couldn’t handle his grief for Joe during his waking hours and then live through Nicky’s grief in his sleep.

Booker dialed another number that he hoped was a lead.

“Hello? Copley?”

“Booker?”

The Frenchman sagged with relief, “Don’t hang up! Please!” He begged.

Silence on the other end, but the line didn’t go dead.

“Copley, please. Is everyone okay?” Booker begged for Copley to say yes, that his nightmares were his own creations, even though he knew they weren’t.

“Joe’s dead.” Another long pause, “But you knew that.”

“Jesus,” Booker reached a shaking hand out toward the coffee table in front of him. His hand hesitated between a carafe of water and a bottle of whiskey sitting next to the table. He leaned down and pulled the whiskey up into his lap, unscrewing the top with one hand. “What happened?”

He could hear Copley hesitating or struggling with what to say next.

“I think you should come here. You need each other.”

“So where’s ‘here’?” Booker asked as he took a swig from the bottle.

“Lebanon. I’ll text you the address.”

“Thanks, Copley.”

~~

He had to get some sleep before boarding the plane, if he fell asleep and woke up combative they would turn the flight around. Or land them who knows where.

Booker tried to relax and brace for the worst at the same time.

~~

_Nicky was still strapped to the bed, this time a mouth guard also fastened around his head to stop him from biting his tongue off. Again. His wrists and ankles were bloody where he’d yanked them against the restraints over and over, repeatedly tearing the skin off and rubbing them raw each time he healed. The mouth guard didn’t completely muffle the screams though, he was still screaming and weeping, his eyes so bloodshot he looked as though he was possessed by a demon._

_Then again, he was._

_Andy was slumped in the corner of the room in a chair, sagging over a small table. Her eyes were open, blank and staring, exhausted and grief stricken._

_Nicky’s grief was suffocating and uncaring, it filled the room and flooded Booker’s mind._

~~

Booker almost crashed the motorcycle as he approached the abandoned safe house, he was so tired and sleep deprived. Copley said the CIA had used this house only a handful of times, then deemed it too close to Beirut to continue hiding agents there.

Andy greeted him at the door, “You look like shit, Book.”

“Pot calling the kettle black, Boss,” Booker swept her up in a hug. It was good to see her again when he thought that wasn’t possible anymore.

“You look like you could use a nap,” Andy said as she led him inside.

“Ha! As if any of us could sleep with Nicky around,” Booker said bitterly. “How is he?”

Andy shook her head, “He’s alive.”

“And that is the worst possible thing for him.”

Andy sighed and leaned a hip against the back of a couch, eyes dropping to the floor, “What do you want me to do, Book? Put him out of his misery? He’s already tried himself over a dozen times. Hell, I had to keep him dead on the flight from Turkey.” Booker didn’t ask how she’d managed that. She added in a soft whisper, “I was hoping he wouldn’t come back.”

Andy raised her head and looked at Booker, “Did you want to see him?”

“Yeah.”

She straightened up and led him through the house to the kitchen, in the back she tossed aside a floor rug and lifted up a cellar door. Booker raised an eyebrow at her.

“I didn’t design the house,” she snapped back.

It was eerily quiet as Booker climbed down the steps into the basement, following Andy. She pulled a cord to turn on a single bulb in the first large open area room, another door towards the back was closed and bolted.

Nicky was inside, still strapped to the same bed Booker had seen in his nightmares, but now with some additional medical equipment here and there. An IV line ran into his arm, but there was no monitoring equipment set up, just a rack for an IV and an infusion pump. He was quiet, asleep as far as Booker could tell.

“Copley brought the equipment earlier this morning. Nile’s upstairs getting some sleep right now,” Andy pulled up the single chair in the room and sat down next to Nicky. She brushed back his hair and touched the corner of his mouth gently, it was grotesquely stretched around the mouth guard. “I always thought when the time came it would come for them both, you know.”

Booker moved into the room and surveyed the vials still in a cardboard box at the foot of the bed. He read through some of the labels: Haldol, Propofol, Ketamine, Ativan, Versed.

“Jesus, Andy. There’s enough here to sedate an entire hospital!”

“What else were we supposed to do? Joe’s dead and Nicky’s broken! You were gone. He’s suffering so much and I can’t do anything to help him. I can’t even kill him! None of us can,” Andy ground out helplessly. “And none of us can sleep. Nicky won’t let us. At least this way, we can all get some rest.”

“But what then? Can we keep him this way forever?”

“I don’t know, Book. Everyone keeps asking me questions that I don’t have answers to,” Andy’s shoulders sagged.

“Andy, I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to fight,” he went to her, taking one of her hands, she leaned her head against his thigh and sighed.

They stood like that for several minutes, Andy with her eyes closed, and Booker watching Nicky breathe.

“Booker.”

Booker turned and saw Nile standing in the doorway. She stepped into the room, hugged him, and they were all reunited.

After a moment Booker knew he had to ask, “What happened?”

Nile stepped back, “You can’t tell from the nightmares?”

Booker shook his head, “It’s too fragmented. Disjointed. I know Joe’s…. gone, but not the details.”

“We were in Xinjiang. We were smuggling Uighur families across the border into Turkey, mostly women and children who’d been detained because their husband or father had already escaped to Turkey. It’s hard for the men to get visas to legally bring their families with them. They usually go first and then try to either legally or illegally bring their families out of Xinjiang.” Nile glanced at Nicky, “Joe was thrilled. He was saving his own people and we’d be back in his old stomping grounds. Joe told me that he and Nicky had met in Anatolia.”

“Did you know that was modern day Turkey?” Booker asked.

Nile’s eyes shifted away, embarrassed, “No, I had to look it up.” Booker smiled. “We were crossing the border into Afghanistan—Andy had a smuggler who was willing to fly all of us the rest of the way if we could get into Afghanistan—when border guards started shooting at us. We got out of that and we were all hit pretty bad, covered in our own blood. You know how it goes, using our bodies as shields.

“Except,” Nile swallowed. “Except when we got to plane Joe collapsed. Nicky had to drag him on board and then he wouldn’t stop bleeding and…” Her eyes filled with tears, “And we knew.” She scrubbed the tears away, “We were all so confused. Andy said you’d done these missions thousands of times. It was all supposed to be routine. I was helping settle in the children when I heard Nicky start screaming. God, it was awful.”

Booker gave her a one armed hug, a quick squeeze.

“And it was as though he couldn’t stop. He screamed and screamed and screamed…” Her voice trailed off as she relived the moment in her mind. “Andy finally had to knock him out. Everyone on board was so freaked out and the children couldn’t stop crying. He woke up once and Andy had to put him down again. He’s been like that since.”

Booker looked down and realized Andy was asleep, leaning into him, holding one of his hands and her other hand clutching one of Nicky’s.

“This….” Nile swallowed again. “This isn’t normal, is it?”

“Hey, your guess is as good as mine. Lykon was the first and I wasn’t even born yet when that happened, but no, I don’t think this is normal.”

“I’m glad you came,” Nile whispered.

Booker nodded, although he didn’t know how his being there helped.

“Come on, I’m going to take Andy upstairs so she can get some proper sleep.” Booker disengaged his hand and hoisted Andy into his arms. She didn’t wake up, her head bobbing against his shoulder as he adjusted his grip.

“Yeah. She hasn’t slept since it happened. Not really,” Nile whispered. “I’ll sit with Nicky. It bothers me to think of him being alone down here.”

Booker nodded and carefully carried Andy upstairs, navigating the narrow cellar steps was exceptionally challenging with Andy’s long legs dangling over his arms. He set her down on the couch and arranged her head and shoulders so she, hopefully, wouldn’t wake up with a sore neck. He’d never seen her so vulnerable or exhausted. Was it the weight of her mortality? After he’d settled her, Booker slumped down in a nearby armchair and dozed off to the first quiet sleep he’d had in over a week.

Copley came over later with food. He went downstairs first to check on Nicky and to switch out the syringe in the pump, adjusting the dosage.

After eating, Andy, Copley, and Booker sat around the kitchen table.

“I’ll stay and look after him,” Booker offered. “It can be part of my punishment. I’ll look after him for a hundred years or more.”

“No, Book. You need to help Nile. There’s so few of us left now,” Andy argued.

“You can teach her. She needs you as a teacher. You can’t have both of us young’uns running things!” Booker protested. “I’m a traitorous back-stabbing drunk and you want to let me take care of the baby? At least if I screw up and overdose Nicky, he’ll get what he wants.”

“You know he’s right.”

“Shut up, Copley,” Andy ground out, dropping her forehead into her hands.

“You’re just telling me that, because you know I’m _right_. Look, even one of you out there does a lot of good and Nile needs your experience more than she needs a functional alcoholic,” Copley insisted.

“Thanks?” Booker said.

Andy groaned into her hands, scrubbing them down over her face. “Let’s ask Nile. If she’s going to be the one going out there, doing this, she gets to have a say in it.” She stood up from the table, the chair scraping across the floor.

Nile looked up from her phone when Andy and Booker entered Nicky’s room. Copley lurked in the doorway. Andy explained and asked, “Since you’ll be doing most of the heavy-lifting, do you want me or Booker on point? Hopefully, no fighting anytime soon, but we need to find and establish another safe house near Paris, since our last one got shot up.” Nile glanced at Copley, who managed to hold a straight face. “We also need to check who the hell was shooting at us last time and if they’re going to be a problem.”

Nile nodded, “I get to decide? Who’s going to take care of Nicky?”

“Whoever you choose will go with you, the other one stays behind and takes care of Nicky. Copley’s going to go arrange a place for us to move Nicky to in London, since we’ll be using that as our base of operations for now,” Andy elaborated.

Nile’s gaze flickered back and forth between Andy and Booker, then she dropped her eyes to Nicky’s still face, “I want Andy.”

~~

Nile and Andy left two days later but Copley stayed behind to help adjust Nicky’s dosage. Eventually they found a balance where Nicky would obediently sit on the edge of the bed in a daze, staring off into space, eyes occasionally flickering around the room. They were also able to remove the mouth guard. He still wouldn’t eat, so they kept in the feeding IV and the saline drip so Booker could inject the sedatives through that line.

They took Nicky upstairs, out of the tiny basement cell, and sat him down on the couch. Copley had eased up on the dosage just before Andy and Nile left so that they could say goodbye to Nicky. He was awake but his eyes were glassy and unfocused, constantly flickering over Andy’s shoulder and wandering around the room. Even half drugged Nicky was searching for someone who wasn’t there anymore. He was mumbling in that ancient Turkish language when they left, calling out occasionally for Yusuf. It was the only word Booker, Nile, and Copley understood. Andy’s expression said she understood it all, but didn’t have the heart to repeat any of it. None of them asked her to.

Before she left Andy gently hung a silver chain over Nicky’s head. Joe’s pendant and two silver rings dangled from the chain. Nicky barely seemed to notice.

Copley left a few days later and told Booker he’d be in contact once he’d set up things in London.

It was easier to have Nicky sleep on the couch, so Booker pulled a mattress off one of the beds upstairs and dragged it to the center of living room. He still dreamed sometimes, but they were just empty and hollow, when Booker woke up he just wanted to weep until his tears washed the dreams away. The only time he left was to ride the motorcycle to the local market for food. He found a few books upstairs, a few in English, most in Lebanese Arabic, even one in French, although it was a law book. Booker started reading one of the English books to Nicky, a cheap airport bought murder mystery novel.

It was after one of the rare trips to the local market for food when Booker was juggling a bag of groceries and his keys that he bumped the front door and it swung open. He immediately crouched down, quietly placing the bag on the ground and sliding his gun from his waistband. He eased the door open and slid inside.

His eyes scanned the room for invaders, then landed on Nicky still sitting on the edge of the couch where Booker had left him. An Asian woman sat next to him, gently stroking his hair. Nicky didn’t register her presence at all his eyes were still blankly staring out at only something he could see. Booker aimed his gun at her.

“Booker,” she greeted him in a soft feminine voice, “So nice to finally meet you.”


End file.
